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As the writer Paul Theroux once said, my London is not your London, though everyone's Washington DC is pretty much the same. One of the greatest joys of our matchless city is that we can live here all our lives and still find new places to delight us.
And one of the sadnesses is the equally matchless stupidity of our municipal guardians, from the Mayor down, who take just as much pleasure in obliterating the individual and interesting in their quest to make London a giant Costa Coffee-branded copy of everywhere else.
Last month, I experienced this delight and sadness together in the unlikely environs of Walthamstow. Five minutes' walk from the modern town centre, I found a perfectly-preserved 16th-century village, complete with church, green, almshouses and timber framed cottages.
Down the road are good pubs, small shops and an excellent tapas bar. And at the heart of it is the best thing of all: the Vestry House Museum, which showed me what a remarkable area Walthamstow really is.
It turns out that, over just 17 years, this place I thought of as dull and drab created two things that revolutionised our country. In 1892, Walthamstow built Britain's first petrol-driven car, the Bremer Car.
And in 1909, Walthamstow Marshes was the site of the first British powered aircraft flight. Alliott Verdon Roe built his revolutionary triplane, the Avro 1, under the railway arches on the London to Chingford line.
Walthamstow was also a centre of Britain's toy industry (remember the Matchbox cars? They were made down the road, and the museum has a fine collection.) And about a mile away, another kind of revolution is marked by another museum, the William Morris Gallery, a rather inspiring collection about the life and work of the great artist and pioneering socialist, in the house where he lived for eight years.
Now for the sad things. Even though the centenary of the Avro 1's first flight is little more than 18 months away, the only mention of it is a small photo on the museum wall (though more activity is planned).
And even though the Bremer Car itself - this priceless piece of our history - is actually owned by the museum, it is tucked away in a back room and very badly labelled. Far greater prominence is given to some well-meaning displays about crafts from the Maghreb, apparently included in tribute to Walthamstow's "diverse cultures" but totally irrelevant to its history (or indeed to its present - this area, unlike say west London, is not a particularly significant centre of Maghrebi settlement).
Worst of all is the fact that if you want to make an easy visit to Walthamstow's cultural treasures, you will have to do so before the end of next week. After that, in an act of absolutely amazing vandalism, Waltham Forest Council, which runs both the Vestry House Museum and the William Morris Gallery, is sacking all but one of their specialist staff and cutting their opening hours by nearly half.
What were full-time museums will now open for only two complete days a week (plus a further four hours on two afternoons, a concession made after a storm of local protest). Without specialist curators, they will become shells of their former selves. The total saving is £56,000 - just enough, as it happens, for Waltham Forest councillors to award themselves a 30 per cent pay rise.
The fact that a Labour council can act so contemptuously towards one of socialism's greatest founding fathers shows, of course, just how far adrift New Labour has come from its principles and its roots. But Waltham Forest's behaviour is stupid and ignorant on a far greater scale.
Other unfashionable and downtrodden places - say Glasgow, with Charles Rennie Mackintosh, or Salford, with LS Lowry - have completely reinvented themselves on the back of their cultural heritage, lifting themselves out of the ordinary and becoming places large numbers of people want to visit.
William Morris is a much more significant figure, artistically and politically, than Mackintosh or Lowry; and God knows, Walthamstow - smeared as "Walthamstan" after last year's alleged aircraft bomb plots - could do with a new image.
The tragedy is that no area of London is more ripe for cultural-led reinvention than this one. As well as Morris, the first aircraft, the first car, and the toys, Waltham Forest was also one of the first homes of the London film industry, the birthplace of Alfred Hitchcock and home to one of London's two finest surviving cinemas, the EMD, the only one with its original Christie organ still intact. It also has Europe's longest street market.
Yes, you guessed it: the street market is barely mentioned in the latest municipal town centre masterplan. And thanks in part to council shillyshallying, the EMD has been closed and rotting for years. Waltham Forest, the Hollywood of London in the 1920s, is now the only borough in the entire city without a full-time cinema.
Clearly there are some pretty third rate people on this council; but can that be the sole reason they have performed so badly? Perhaps the real problem is this: many of London's governing classes are profoundly ambivalent about our history and culture, about the things that make us Londoners.
For all Gordon Brown's endless talk of "Britishness," he and his subordinate, Ken Livingstone, have presided over the destruction of many of the things that define Britain and London, from buses to buildings.
Ken's idea of London is as no more than an international transit-lounge for bankers, tourists and migrants, somehow floating above the rest of the UK. That's certainly part of our identity but not many people - not even many bankers, tourists or migrants - want it to be the dominant part.
So let's make 2008 the year in which we rescue some of our accomplishments as a city and a nation from the obscurity into which our misguided rulers have cast them. Starting with the Avro 1, the William Morris Gallery and the Bremer Car.
Reader views (11)
Waltham Forest has been deliberately allowed to lose any local character, culture or history in an attempt to "be inclusive" and reflect incomers. There is a place for incomers and diversity but we should celebrate what we had and were and foster and encourage our heritage and culture too. Too much funding is diverted to projects which benefit a limited number of people but create jobs for professional fund raisers and quangos.
- Mj, Leytonstone
Agree it's awful to sack the curator. The museum should be open for longer hours, not shorter. The only good thing about the changes is that it opens on a Sunday now.
And Walthamstow has a beautiful village centre and lots of history to be proud of.
Where our Council has really been slow is in getting external funding for the EMD, the museum housing the Bremer car and ways to commemorate Roe's flight. These are not just of local interest but are nationally or even internationally important.
- M.Munday, Walthamstow
Thanks for shining a light on Walthamstow - a first-rate place let down by a third-rate council. This year's cuts (along with councillors' massive pay rises) also closed a library in a deprived area, axed numerous leisure classes, doomed the borough's only surviving theatre and cut too many other local amenities to list.
The funny thing is, so many people have rallied to protect them that the scene is livelier than ever. Comedy, music, art exhibitions, films - it's all happening, despite the dead weight (and frequent hostility) of the council. There's plenty for kids too, including fun days and book swaps outside the closed St James Street Library.
Let the councillors enjoy their allowances, now a budget-busting £900,000 a year. With a bit of luck, they won't be profiting after the next election.
- Anon, Walthamstow, London, UK
Andrew
I couldn't beleive how precise youre article was. You cannot believe the way that arts and culture are so ignored here despite the fact that every person who lives here says the same in a circular argument.
It's not just the Council we as locals need to get our act together, but LBWF Culture is not, its libraries and Sports Centre led and LBWF has hidden its head in the ground on that for a very long time. Whilst the most potential community is left.
I can't believe how closely you nailed that.
- Anon, UK
I totally support the retention of and the usual hours of the William Morris gallery.
I was born in Walthamstom, virtually opposite the Town Hall and only left when my father's employment took us away.
I flew over Walthamstow in a helicopter recently and took some photographs, although not as many as I wanted to (the pilot said that he was not allowed to hover!).
Walthamstow will always remain in my heart and the thought of cutting down the cultural links to the past is really painful.
Good luck with changing the mindset!
- Brian Skingley, Heybridge Basin, Maldon, Essex
Thank you, Andrew, for a fantastic summary of the cultural vandalism of our Lib-Lab Council.But there's more: the Council wants to demolish the only theatre, wants to merge park-keeping with roadsweeping, has priced publicly-owned halls far beyond the pockets of community groups, has been forced to admit to losing or destroying 240,000 library books, some of them of great value, and is intent on getting rid of all qualified librarians, having closed one branch library without warning. In September local people staged a guided walk, the Trail of Destruction, past a selection of amenities under council attack, even including WCs! Only a mass demonstration of dinner ladies stopped Waltham Forest cancelling the school meals service.
- Mdj, London
Far from being run by a Labour Council, Waltham Forest is run by a joint Labour-Lib Dem coalition. At the full Council Meeting on 22 February 2007 a budget was agreed which included £56,000 of cuts to the William Morris Gallery and Vestry House Museum. Although the Conservative Group voted against it, by refusing to set an opposition budget they failed to demonstrate any positive alternative strategy. No party comes out of this shameful episode well I fear.
- Tim Bennett-Goodman, London UK
I moved to Walthamstow about seven years ago purely to get a foot on the property ladder (my first choice was Hackney but I was quickly priced out) and must say, like yourself, considered it a tad drab.
However, once I'd discovered the village, the Nag's Head, The Plough, The East London Sausage Company Shop and the Italian gem that is La Ruga Trattoria (best Rabbit stew this side of Tuscany) I decided to move my girlfriend here and we bought a place together. Right next to the William Morris Museum.
I read your article with a great sense of gratitude as it seems the residents of Walthamstow need all the help they can get in preserving their local history.
Anyway, I just wanted to say thanks for shining the light on E17 and it's woeful Council!
Happy New Year!
- Adrian Spurdon, London, UK.
Walthamstow is a wonderful place to live.
It was mentioned in the Doomsday book in 1086 as the ‘welcoming place’.
And it really is: along our exciting (and very good value) High Street market you will see that Multiculturalism is alive and kicking in Walthamstow. And it’s great fun, too.
By slowly closing down local treasures like the William Morris Gallery and the Vestry House Museum (cutting staff, cutting opening hours, not advertise them etc.) this council is committing a crime: it’s a crime against English national heritage.
Local people love their museums. There are over 10,000 signatures in support of the Gallery and the Vestry House Museum!
- Dr Sieglinde Dlabal, Walthamstow, London
Well said ! You used to be able to identify London High Streets (and football stadiums) from a photograph. Now they're all too similar, you look at them and it could be Grimsby or anywhere. Who wants that?
- Bob, London
Thank you Andrew Gilligan. This is the sanest and clearest exposition of what we have been struggling against this year in Walthamstow, with a blockhead, philistine 'Cabinet' supported by a morally dubious and incompetent gang of local government officers.
- Shirley P, Walthamstow, London
